Items Simplifying ammo types

652Graystripe

Plantera
Although one of the major assets of ranged weapons is the variety of useful ammo types you can use, there are a few that take it too far. Niche ammo types made for specific weapons end up cluttering the game, forcing more micromanagement. While that might be a way to make the parent weapons less viable, specificity isn't a proper way to balance things out.

I understand that this may seem heavy-handed, but please see beyond the "pruning" I'm doing here and understand that it's just to keep ammo less granular and easier to manage.

You'll notice there are a few weapons here that I left out, like the Snowball Cannon and Bone Glove. For those, I ignored them because they're using ammo that's 1) already throwable and 2) not purchased.

This is relatively simple:

Stake_Launcher.png

Stake Launcher
-Now fires arrows, turning wooden ones into stakes (this also means that it can benefit from the Archery Potion)

Candy_Corn_Rifle.png

Candy Corn Rifle
-Now fires bullets, turning normal ones into candy corn

Stynger.png

Stynger
-Now fires rockets, turning them into stynger bolts

Nail_Gun.png

Nail Gun
-Now fires rockets, turning them into nails (share the damage value of the rocket used)

Jack_%27O_Lantern_Launcher.png

Jack 'O Lantern Launcher
-Turns rockets into Explosive Jack 'o Lanterns (which share the damage value of the rocket used)

Note that this would buff the launcher rather significantly, since Explosive Jack 'o Lanterns currently have only 30 base damage and have a mechanic where they double their damage on a direct hit. Since the Launcher isn't a terrible weapon already, it would likely require a (small) nerf to its base damage to compensate. Or it could be left as is, really, since there are also better options out there.

OR
-Now fires any type of cannonball
-Damage reduced to 15 (to compensate for cannonballs' damage)
-Use time increased to 40 (1.5 shots/sec)
-No longer hits twice upon impact

Explosive_Jack_%27O_Lantern.png

Explosive Jack 'o Lantern
Note that these changes only go with the second iteration of the Jack 'O Lantern Launcher. In the first, I think it would be best to remove these from the game.
-Classified as a cannonball
-Damage increased from 30 to 300
-Leaves napalm on the ground (similarly to Greek Fire attack)

3 Dec 2018: As per my own thoughts and several commenters, removed special ammo entirely and made these weapons the only ones able to fire them.
18 June 2020: Bunny Cannon can stay.
6 July 2020: Updated Jack 'O Lantern Launcher to reflect another potential solution (I still want handheld cannons so desperately). Also, apparently I've been putting the apostrophe on the wrong side of the O this whole time.

One last thing here - what about the balance? One thing that was nerfing a lot of these weapons was the specificity of their ammo, and now that they're universally compatible, they're theoretically stronger.

To that I'll answer that a lot of them (all of them except the Stynger) were already niche or outright bad weapons, and frankly they could use a little bit of a buff. There's one that really benefits here, the Candy Corn Rifle, which was previously a godawful choice because of its piercing causing invincibility frames. Now piercing is optional, since it works with any bullet, so if you're willing to bring cursed bullets or something it becomes a mid-ground between the Chain Gun and Megashark.

With the Stynger, Rocket I's cost 50 copper to the Stynger Bolts' 75 copper - it's really not a big change, and it won't make the Stynger overpowered or anything. This is just a tiny ripple in the pond, balance-wise.
 
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I like this idea a lot actually. It would be nice to use those other weapons with everyday ammo, and using their ammo with other things as well. Only thing I don't like is removing the bunny cannon, I like that thing way too much
 
I wouldn’t be bothered at all if special ammo was removed from the game entirely; I have no desire to fire Nails from a grenade launcher or Candy Corn from a shotgun. Having them available as regular ammo kind of destroys the uniqueness of their respective weapons. I would prefer if the effectiveness of these ranged weapons was adjusted on a case-by-case basis, rather than mixing them all together and hoping that a balanced game springs out of the entire mess.
 
I like this idea a lot actually. It would be nice to use those other weapons with everyday ammo, and using their ammo with other things as well. Only thing I don't like is removing the bunny cannon, I like that thing way too much
Oh, I love it too. My rationale here was that explosive bunnies could be fired from the normal cannon, rather than needing an entirely new one to fire them from.

I wouldn’t be bothered at all if special ammo was removed from the game entirely; I have no desire to fire Nails from a grenade launcher or Candy Corn from a shotgun. Having them available as regular ammo kind of destroys the uniqueness of their respective weapons. I would prefer if the effectiveness of these ranged weapons was adjusted on a case-by-case basis, rather than mixing them all together and hoping that a balanced game springs out of the entire mess.
You ain't wrong, and frankly that's how I'd prefer things - the first draft of this thread was to completely discard most of the special ammo types. I opted for what we see here while trying to figure a less drastic solution, and I can't really see any huge holes in using these as special ammo types, but in retrospect there isn't a whole lot of benefit either.
 
I wouldn’t be bothered at all if special ammo was removed from the game entirely; I have no desire to fire Nails from a grenade launcher or Candy Corn from a shotgun. Having them available as regular ammo kind of destroys the uniqueness of their respective weapons. I would prefer if the effectiveness of these ranged weapons was adjusted on a case-by-case basis, rather than mixing them all together and hoping that a balanced game springs out of the entire mess.
I thought this suggestion was abolishing special ammo
 
I thought this suggestion was abolishing special ammo
It kind of is, since they're now considered normal ammo types. My original draft was just "nope, screw it, we're getting rid of special ammo types completely, these weapons just convert musket balls or something." I opted for the one you see here because I wanted a less heavy-handed solution.
 
Nah, not really. This makes them available whenever, rather than just with the equivalent weapon.
Sounds good; was just pointing it out in case it was overlooked. I support simplifying the ammo types. I don't really understand their point. If they were somehow overpowered and needed ammo restrictions, it could be justified. None of the weapons have really impressed me though. If they could use generic ammo, they can fill gaps in the weapon progression trees.
 
This is a fairly good idea, I like the whole simplifying the ammo types deal (and there are already plenty of weapons that turn an ammo into something unique: such as The Bee's Knees) However, I don't like the whole "you can fire these unique ammos from every ranged weapon" because as Baconfry said above, it destroying the uniqueness of these weapons. The special ammos is really the only thing that makes them stand out.
 
I like it. It makes things more convenient yet doesn't make those weapons nobrainers, is quite balanced. Except for Jack O'Lantern Launcher maybe. 2.4 times DPS increase out of the blue might be too much.

But Bunny Cannon should stay! It's too kawaii to be removed! I mean... it's not even a weapon!
 
I like it. It makes things more convenient yet doesn't make those weapons nobrainers, is quite balanced. Except for Jack O'Lantern Launcher maybe. 2.4 times DPS increase out of the blue might be too much.

But Bunny Cannon should stay! It's too kawaii to be removed! I mean... it's not even a weapon!
For the Jack O'Lantern Launcher, it currently hits twice for every projectile, which I guess assumed would be removed here. I'll update as such, since I didn't make it clear.

For the Bunny Cannon... yeah, I love it too, but it's a money sink when the real fun is in detonating bunnies. Muahaha!
 
For the Jack O'Lantern Launcher, it currently hits twice for every projectile, which I guess assumed would be removed here. I'll update as such, since I didn't make it clear.

For the Bunny Cannon... yeah, I love it too, but it's a money sink when the real fun is in detonating bunnies. Muahaha!
Yeah, please do update it. As I thought it's about damage only, not mechanics. Also, I don't clearly see why it should change actually. That's how it works right now. For some reason it deals damage twice, be it cus of programming ease (most likely) related to it's jumping nature or something else. Why would it change? Cannonball cost 100 times more than current Jack ammo. IMO they should just use rockets as well and get some damage buff.
 
Yeah, please do update it. As I thought it's about damage only, not mechanics. Also, I don't clearly see why it should change actually. That's how it works right now. For some reason it deals damage twice, be it cus of programming ease (most likely) related to it's jumping nature or something else. Why would it change? Cannonball cost 100 times more than current Jack ammo. IMO they should just use rockets as well and get some damage buff.
You've got a solid point, and probably if I knew what was good for this suggestion I'd do that. That being said... I just love the idea of a handheld cannon giving a little more versatility to what's otherwise kind of a boring weapon.
 
As much as this change sounds reasonable,it's not.Each of these speciall ammunition types works differently in their own way,for example Stakes have way higher damage than any arrow (stake 25dmg,arrows 6dmg-17dmg) and speciall effects exclusive to just this kind of "arrows"(pierce up to 10 targets and deals improved damage to vampires)
You could say that they just need to change base damage of this weapon by bit,and we're good...but what's the point of ammunition then?We can do this as well with every other weapon.But what about ammo with special effects then?We can replace them with already existing flasks in game I guess...
My point is,they could change few things to make it "simplier",if walking a bit more to other npc to buy different kind of arrows is way to complicated somehow,just dont overthink it,because it's easy to :red: up the game,its fantasy,immersion and whatever other ppl feels about it.<cough> World of Warcraft<cough><cough>
 
removing content thats weak instead of buffing it is a bad idea
How weak it is isn't my main concern; my deal is that it's just getting in the way.
Dunno if I'm misunderstanding, but the unique properties of stakes, etc. still exist - it just happens that you don't have to do painful inventory management to handle them now. Rearranging ammo types is no fun, and it isn't actually difficult, which means it's mostly just wasted time (albeit a pretty small amount of wasted time). That kind of artificial difficulty only serves, from a game design perspective, to make things more grindy. C'mon, do you like handling all these different ammo types?
 
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